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// "Sunset Shimmer, Baby Tyrant" 
// Story: Sunset Shimmer Goes to Hell 
// by scifipony 
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The instant I tackled Brandywine, he'd become as see-through as Canterlot mountain glacial ice.  He felt bony as my forelegs wrapped around his rear ones and I turned my head aside.  We didn't hit the ground.

The world turned instantly totally dark.  But for Brandywine's warm fur snugged into my body, with him flailing, the feeling of void would have been total.  I couldn't inhale.  My lungs strained, stabbing in my chest as they failed to expand.  Exhaling had been wrong; there wasn't air to inhale!  Sprains grew along my ribs.  Choking, my heart racing in sudden panic, I too began to flail, barely noticing the absolute cold that frosted every bit of skin despite my fur, and began freezing my ears and nose.  I shut my useless eyes against the cold that burnt them.  Ten, fifteen seconds passed.  My head pounded as pulses of oxygen-poor blood seemed to expand my skull, shocking my eyes with flashing purple and blue phosphene stars; it made me fear that my head might explode before I passed out.  This was how Celestia had bested me when I had fought to expel her from my kingdom.  This was how she'd won.  I wanted to scream!

Then, wham!  

We struck ground as air whooshed in and sunlight blinded me.  I tumbled up and over Brandywine's head and withers as we rolled and tumbled.  I got my frosted eyelids open just in time to twist so I landed on my back and didn't break my neck— and to squeal as Brandywine came down hard on my stomach, straddling me, blasting out the first great breath of air I had gotten.  Much bigger than me, he flattened me.  I gasped and choked as if punched.

He looked up, his amber eyes meeting mine.  He looked down.  His eyes widened.  His face reddened as he shoved himself off me, jumping back.  "Oh dear!  I'm sorry.  I didn't do that on purpose!"

I would have laughed had I caught my breath.  Him blushing because of me almost made it okay.  I rolled over breathlessly as he scooted in front of me, offering a hoof up.  As I finally got air into my tortured lungs, and the stars flashing before my eyes faded, I looked at him, then myself.  Enough frost clung to me, where I hadn't rolled in the dirt, that I looked snowed upon.  Cold condensation steamed from both our hides.  

I blinked, bounced up, shaking the stuff off.  "We teleported.  That was a teleport!"  I'd studied the spell and had learned about the black void, a so-called dead-zone in between realities.  I had scoffed at the "dead" part of the idea.  I'd learned that its duration would be proportional to distance traveled...

I gasped.  Though my nose burned, I perked my frost-bitten ears as I looked around excitedly.  Beyond Brandywine, I saw a distant bank of clouds that, in the dark beneath them, seemed to hide mountains.  Looking left and around, the blue-gray puffy border circled until to the east I could see the already risen sun that had blinded me.  We stood in a deep green field of borage and other spicily scented herbs.  It smelled like like we stood outside the Grand Bazaar spice market in Is A Bull... reputably.  I had crushed a row of basil.  And beyond the farm, a mile or so, I saw what looked like a small town on the outskirts of a collection of factory buildings.  I looked back toward Brandywine and to what had to be the mountains we'd left behind. 

Dusting leaves and soil out of his mane, he said, "Technically a teleport, perhaps, but that was traveling—"

"You have to teach me to teleport."  Tartarus, I already sensed I knew the shape of the spell!

He smiled, but still rolled his eyes.  "Sweet Miss Bossy, don't you know that too much candy will make your teeth fall out?"

"B-b-b-b-ut–"  I sputtered.

"Yes, but— Look, I would teach you—after resting your horn from our last lesson—but I don't know Teleport, either.  Traveling is my special talent, and I can't control it."  He waved his foreleg toward the mountains and the sun.  "We traveled a dozen miles and an hour—apparently forward—in time.  All I did was keep a destination in my head.  I'm too scared to even think about the moon."

Aw.  He really was a tortured hero from any number of stories I'd read!  I caught myself mid-sigh when I heard a rustle behind us.

I jumped and faced the noise, crushing fragrant sage this time.  Nothing grew higher than my stomach, but I saw nopony.  I started casting Levitation, but Brandywine gently tapped my horn, scrambling my thoughts.  He said, "Show yourself, inmate."

The rustle came from our left.  A mint-green reptilian head with a red cockatoo frill and a matching long thread mustache rose on a long scaled neck.  As slit emeraline eyes regarded us, an ominous shishing of a rattle started to our right.  Smoke issued from the drake's nostrils.  Its neck flattened into a hood of glittering crystal scales in a shifting hypnotic spiral pattern that reflected the sun behind us.  The primitive horsey part of me screamed predator!  Frustrated that Brandywine had prevented my spellcasting, I averted my sight to the creature's snake eyes and hissed between clenched teeth, "Look at her eyes not her throat!"

"Absolutely," he replied, then said conversationally, "I met Lady Jewel when I was a foal."

"It'sss been a long time, Brandywine," she said, "Long time."  Definitely a she from the timbre of her voice despite the sibilant sound of her words as she spoke.  She turned her gaze to me and wheezed, "We are well met, inmate."

The drake reminded me I was little bigger than a foal.  "I—"

Brandywine butted my flank with his rear and interrupted.  "It is rude to stare."

"In my culture, from which I was so impolitely ripped away, not ss-so much.  Have you seen any rainbow crows lately?"  She continued looking at me, now with a bit of a grin I would have thought impossible on a reptilian face.

"Less than an hour ago."

"Really?  I was out looking for them to report a violation I witnessed."

"Have you seen my father?"

"I haven't seen Wolf Run since I last saw you.  Speaking of which, where have you been hiding all these years?"

I said, "He's—"

He butted me again.  He obviously wanted me quiet, but being so was hard when an adult said such stupid things. 

Jewel continued, "This little fiend is too young for you.  Such a tender tasty morsel!  Pray tell, my dearie, what unthinkable crime did you commit for Princess Celestia to send a foal like you here?"

As nice as his flank was, I decided to look at him instead of opening my mouth.  Without a beat, he said, "She made herself the Queen of Cliffside and when Celestia intervened, Sunset Shimmer here tried to pull off her wings like she was a butterfly."

He'd listened!  I turned and gave Jewel my biggest predatory grin with plenty of teeth.  "Nearly succeeded, too!" I added brightly. 

"Sunset Shimmer, Baby Tyrant.  Very nice choice, Brandywine."

"I think so."

That sent my heart speeding and I began to flush.

He said, "Now you'd better move along.  Don't want the rainbow crows thinking you were using your magic, do you?"

"I'm going to find one, and not by doing my magic, either.   Ask some questions, I will."  Her tail curved up into the air as she deflated her hood, showing a corncob-like rattle as long as my leg.  "If I see Wolf Run, I'll tell him you're looking for him."  She finished rising until she formed a wheel almost the diameter of a second story house.  She bit her tail and rolled away along the irrigation ditch.

"What was that about?" I asked.  "Was she threatening to eat me?"

"Yes.  She's a true bogey-mare story.  She's also Tartarus' biggest gossip.  Best not to say anything around her."

"But, you—"

"Now you have a reputation.  Much better than being challenged to a fight."

Ha!  Wasn't it I who always said that peace through reputation was better than peace through force?  But, "I thought that they kept you from fighting in jail."

I followed Brandywine as he nodded at the distant dust wake that marked Jewel's path.  She headed into town and we followed.  He said, "That's the thing, it's Tartarus, not a jail.  If you don't use magic, or your special talent which is the same thing, the place is pretty much self-governing.  There are some ponies with authority that Celestia posts here for extended periods of time and escorts back.  They don't govern, per se.  The inmates run the asylum, as the saying goes, as long as it remains mostly civil."

He stopped for a moment to look at me from muzzle to dock.  He continued, "And Jewel pegged you as special.  Nopony foals here.  Nopony ages, either.  Were you to stay, you'd remain half-grown forever.  Part of the ambient magic.  Best that you have an untouchable rep when we get into town.   If you're stuck here awhile because I can't get you out, ponies should think you can defend yourself."

"It's no lie."  I grinned widely.  "I fight dirty."  I'd learned the term dirty recently; it was more nuanced than saying I fought to win.

He smiled back over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow.  "Really?  I had no idea.  I thought you'd said Celestia tamed you."

"She wishes!  Don't worry, I'll remind you if you ever get physical with me."

He chuckled.  

I blushed, again, realizing I'd lifted a double-entendre straight from Lost in the Woods that I'd read last week.  Oddly enough, I felt none of the girly yuck I might have usually thought about thinking about getting physical in real life.  Instead, I thought about how I wished I was just a few years older.  He was a lovely sight walking behind him, the sun playing chiaroscuro across the muscles of his hindquarters.  There!  Art class wasn't a waste after all!  

I sighed and flushed again.